Humanizing AI-Assisted Sinhala: Rewrite, Then Read Every Line

Sinhala is a medium of instruction in Sri Lankan state universities: the UGC's 2025/2026 admissions handbook lists it as the Arts medium at Sri Jayewardenepura, Kelaniya, Ruhuna and Rajarata, and offers Sinhala, Tamil or English for Arts at Colombo and Peradeniya [1].

The national framework. The University Grants Commission (UGC) led work on an AI Policy Framework for State Universities, which was launched in partnership with the U.S. Embassy on 8 May 2026 [2]. According to the Ministry of Digital Economy, the UGC-approved framework was adopted on 24 June 2026 with a 2026–2029 implementation plan, and it was proposed that each state university draw up its own AI policy and standard operating procedures by 31 December 2026 [3].

One university's rules. The University of Colombo's generative AI policy lists “paraphrasing and content humanizer tools” among the tools it covers [4]. Under that policy:

• AI use in any assessment is off-limits unless the instructions explicitly authorise it [4].
• Where AI is allowed, substantive language editing, such as paraphrasing or improving flow and tone, is a permitted use once you declare it with the tool's name and version and how you used it, and you must check that meaning and accuracy are kept [4].
• An AI-developed first draft counts as plagiarism even when acknowledged, and humanising AI-generated content to prevent its identification or disguise its origin “constitutes intentional academic deception” [4].

Sinhala falls outside the major AI detectors. Turnitin's AI-writing detector handles long-form English, Spanish, Japanese and Modern Arabic only, so a Sinhala paper goes unprocessed [1], and Sinhala isn't on the list for Translated Matching, the Turnitin similarity feature that translates papers into English [2]. Originality.ai's 31-language list omits Sinhala [3], and GPTZero's fully supported list stops at English, German, Portuguese, French and Spanish [4]. DrillBit, which the University of Colombo's library uses for undergraduate similarity and AI reports [5], supports Sinhala for plagiarism checks but not for AI detection [6].

Our own detector returns a number for Sinhala, but not a useful one. It rated a fully AI-written Sinhala paragraph 71% AI and SupWriter's default-mode rewrite 68% [7]; an aggressive-mode rewrite made the same day scored 70.7%. A score that barely moves tells you nothing, so we show none. We have no sample to show yet either: in both runs, parts of the rewrite came back in English and some Sinhala sentences didn't read coherently. We also have no data on human-written Sinhala yet, so how often it flags genuine writing is unknown.

Colombo's policy lets authorities run a suspected assignment through “suitable AI detectors” without your prior permission, and it names none [8]. With no tool here able to judge Sinhala reliably, your notes, drafts and AI declaration carry more weight than any score.